


Anti-Music Songs

by Ias



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Banter, Bickering, M/M, musician au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-18 15:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14215668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: Newt had never met a silence he hadn’t been happy to fill, but the one from behind him was as pointed as a scalpel pressed into the small of his back. When he glanced back, Accountant-Hair was looking at Newt as if he’d bitten into a slice of lemon thinking it was an orange.“I am not,” the man said, “afan.”[aka the AU where Newt is in a shitty band and Hermann is his new manager.]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I plan on tossing a few other sections into this fic before wrapping it up; it'll be pretty low-key and plotless, but hopefully it will be fun.
> 
> The title is taken from that Mountain Goats song, which is just so totally _them._

So the gig went well. There were roughly the same number of people in the bar at the end of the show as there were when Mako struck the first power chord, and only a couple of them had pointedly migrated to the opposite side of the room when Newt began to sing.

Not like Newt took that sort of thing personally. And yeah, sure, most people who went out of their way to say they didn’t take something personally had a secret yarn map of their elaborate revenge scheme against all the people whose opinions they totally one-hundred-percent didn’t care about at all.

That wasn’t Newt’s deal. _Really_. It was just that his singing voice—if you could technically call it singing, which wasn’t the hill he was going to die on or even the mound he was going to get moderately winded on—wasn’t exactly what the mainstream considered _sonically pleasing_. Or maybe just _good_. And that wasn’t helped by the fact that their lead guitarist had a propensity to coax sounds out of her instrument that could best be described as “weaponized”; or that their drums player was working out his personal issues percussively; or that their keyboard player sometimes got distracted by a pretty face in the audience, and add in a few extra flourishes or five.

Look, it wasn’t like they were _professionals_. And it wasn’t like they wanted to be. It might have been nice if their manager, aka Tendo’s college friend, had  also shared that glorious low-key indie vision, instead of a vision that involved moving to Seattle to take a job with Amazon and only letting the band know like, yesterday. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was the music.

So they did the show, considered it a success, and were packing up their instruments to go home. Afterward Tendo slapped a lukewarm bottle of water into Newt’s hand, the plastic so thin it was practically saran-wrap.

“Dude with the cane wants to talk to you,” he said, hardly slowing his trajectory towards the bar and the woman in a t-shirt for a band that wasn’t theirs was waiting to be bought a drink. Not like their band even had t-shirts. Newt was fine with that. If their band _did_ have t-shirts, they would probably be a sickly neon green, like a weathered radioactive hazard sign, with their logo in distressed purple. Newt would draw up a sketch. No, he wouldn’t. That was a bad idea for many reasons, chiefly the fact that their band was never going to get t-shirts because they didn’t want to be the sort of band that had t-shirts, and also because Newt couldn’t draw. But also, and most immediately relevant, because the mystery man with a snappy cane (hey, cool song title) had peeled off from talking to Raleigh on the other side of the room, and was headed in Newt’s direction.

Newt had noticed him before, actually. He’d spent the show at the bar; which wasn’t notable. He hadn’t smiled or bobbed his head; ditto. But what Newt _had_ noticed (other than the fact that he was kind of cute, in an ironic-top-button accountant-hair kind of way) was the fact that he seemed to be taking notes. Not even scribbled on a bar napkin; he had like, an actual legal pad. Which was either flattering or kind of alarming, but Newt was _ready_ to be flattered. He was putting serious pro-flattery vibes into the universe right now.

“Sup dude?” Newt said over his shoulder as the mystery man stopped nearby, closing his guitar case with a deeply satisfying double-snap. “Enjoy the show? Tendo said you were a fan. We don’t have many of those, so this is probably a pretty special moment for both of us.”

Newt had never met a silence he hadn’t been happy to fill, but the one from behind him was as pointed as a scalpel pressed into the small of his back. When he glanced back, Accountant-Hair was looking at Newt as if he’d bitten into a slice of lemon thinking it was an orange. 

“I am not,” he said, “a _fan_.”

The way his tone of voice put on hazmat gloves and a respirator before deigning to touch the word ‘fan’ required a full-body turn to further appraise the situation, which Newt completed with something adjacent to effortless grace but a shorter walking distance to almost-falling-over. Newt gave the man as thorough a once-over as he was capable of, in the dim light of this shitty bar. He dressed like he’d got lost on the way to the water cooler at his job where he explained in pitiless detail to little old ladies why they couldn’t collect their dead husbands’ life insurance. Probably while wearing the exact same expression as he had on his face right now.  

He was gripping his cane hard and leaning some of his weight on it, so it probably wasn’t a fashion accessory. Newt wasn’t sure whether he’d approve more or less if it was. He was starting to suspect he wasn’t going to approve of anything about the mystery man with the snappy cane at any point in the foreseeable future.

Also, on further consideration, the top button was definitely _not_ ironic.

“O-kay,” Newt said, and turned around to continue flicking the power cords out from their outlets across the room and reeling them into a messy bundle. “Not a fan, sure, right, I’m getting that impression now. Fine then, guess you’re a critic. You here to leave us a bad review on wherever you leave bad reviews for a band with no website? Gonna post it on your personal blog?”

“I take it you meet critics fairly often,” Unironic-Top-Button said in a tone so dry it was ready to be labeled and dropped into a specimen jar.

“You know what?” Newt brandished a finger and thus dropped all the cables, his own voice beginning to climb. “This is honestly pretty pathetic dude, I mean you don’t _look_ like the kind of person who has better things to do with his time, but I choose to believe that isn’t true—”

_“_ Mr. Geizler—"

“Actually, it’s Dr. Geizler, which you’d know if you were actually a fan—but seriously, call me Newt. Especially when you write that scathing review, because if there’s one thing I can’t stand more than losers who go to shows they know they’re gonna hate just to write about it on the internet is seeing my last name in print—”

“ _Newton_.” It was a step up, or at least in the right direction, so Newt stopped wrestling with the power cords long enough to turn around and fix Probably Critic #5 (not quite as cool a title, but even less cool in the present context) with an interrogative stare. His facial expression had shifted into the strained resolve of an amateur psychic struggling to bend a plastic spoon with his mind.

“You know, mysterious-yet-ultimately-disappointing-stranger, I don’t actually want to hear it. Because I don’t actually have time to listen to assholes with no taste in music right now, in point of fact—”

“I suggest you _make_ time—"

“Oho, whippin’ out the bad cop routine, huh? Alright dude, bring it on—”

“If you would bring yourself to stop eroticizing the sound of your own voice for long enough for me—”

“So my voice is erotic now, huh? Why don’t you put _that_ in your review—”

The man threw his hand up, the other bringing his cane down hard in something not too far from a childish foot-stomp. “For the—I don’t have time for this. You _will_ be hearing from me.”

He turned around and headed for the door, leaving Newt standing with his arms full of orange extension cords, brandishing a finger at his back. “Oh, I’ll be hearing— _hearing_ from you? Is that a threat? Like a really underwhelming threat? You going to write a _strongly worded email_?”

With one final venomous look over his shoulder, the man stopped only to grab the most _egregious_ puffy green coat off the coat hanger by the door. And that was almost enough to make Newt wish he wasn’t leaving, because he had some absolutely scathing insults lining up about _that_ particular fashion statement.

“Newt.” Raleigh materialized behind him with a frown. For a man who looked like God had created him for the sole purpose of doing keg stands, Raleigh did _disappointed teacher_ like a pro. “Why were you yelling at Hermann?”

“Hermann? You mean the guy who looks like an undertaker for hipsters? He’s got a name now? Why shouldn’t I yell at assholes?” Newt dumped his armful of cables into the waiting duffle bag, which was, in all likelihood, about three sizes too small. “Also, he is _very_ yell-able at. Practically irresistibly so.”

Raleigh crossed his arms over his chest, which would have looked very macho if his facial expression hadn’t taken a turn towards _disapproving parent._ “Okay, I’m not going to dig into that. But is this going to be a problem?”

Newt stopped wrestling the cables into the duffle bag to shoot Raleigh a baffled look. “Why would fighting with some stupid music critic be a problem?”

Raleigh squinted at him as if trying to physically see past the membrane of poor communication between them. Then, he pointed at the door. “Hermann Gottlieb is our new manager.”

The silence between them went on for a long time before Newt remembered he was supposed to be filling it.

“Wait,” he said. “ _What?”_


	2. Chapter 2

The beer was good, so at least there was that. It was the kind that came in weirdly heavy bottles, with artsy labels and molded glass, all very hip and obnoxious and _definitely_ overpriced. Newt was like 70% sure that Tendo only bought them because the labels complimented his aesthetic, which, hey, fair. So not in a position to judge in that department. And even though the beer tasted pretty awful, like _really_ , astonishingly bad, it was still better than the Bud Light at Raleigh’s house. Mako’s slightly-tongue-in-cheek sake would always be Newt’s favorite.

What wasn’t his favorite was the fact that this was seriously an argument they were still having. That might be, in fact, his _least_ favorite. Aside from B sharp. Something about that note was just shifty, or maybe shiftless.

“It’s not like we have a choice,” Tendo was saying. He used his bottle of beer as a prop, the label turned carefully outward so you could see how the pop of red matched his suspenders. Newt hated the fact that he kind of respected that dedication to vanity.

Newt adjusted his glasses, the end result more askew than before. “Uh, dude, it’s kind of our band, in case anyone here is forgetting that. And we do very much have a choice about whether we want to bring in some third-party jerk just because he’s good with a calculator.”

“We leave on our tour in less than a week,” Raleigh said. “Do you want to take over all the logistics that Erica was handling?”

“I mean, how hard could it be? It’s just like, hotels, and budgeting, and phone calls, probably?”

“I’m gonna assume that’s a rhetorical question,” Raleigh said, leaning back in his chair. In Tendo’s small but decidedly hip apartment, there wasn’t much space to lean.

“I like him,” Mako said. Her beer label was tucked against the inside of her palm, but probably just because she hadn’t noticed it. Not some kind of statement about the futility of physical presentation. The red wouldn’t match her hair, anyway.

Which was all beside the point, because: “You _like_ him? What? Did you even meet the guy?”

“We spoke a great deal,” Mako said. “He seemed intelligent. Passionate about his work.”

“And that speaking never at any point transformed into _yelling_?”

“I think it’s just you, dude,” Tendo said, taking an artful sip of the beer he’d been artfully sipping for like 30 minutes now.

“It is not just me, I swear to _Go_ _d_ the guy was a total dick, acting all high-and-mighty from the _get-go_ —“

“No, I’m saying, like,” Tendo leaned back and propped his ankle on his knee to reveal a sock the same red as the beer label. It had raccoons on it. “Maybe he just hates _you_.”

Newt reached underneath his glasses to rub distractedly at his eyes. “Okay, that’s more plausible, but still not a great dynamic to bring into a month long road trip in a van which, _as I have said_ , is almost definitely too small for all of us.”

And look, he was _psyched_ about the trip. They’d been planning it for a year, at first as idle talk about how they should totally go on tour someday, and then talking about where they’d go if they did, and then suddenly Raleigh was putting together a budget and Mako was looking at rental vans and Tendo was splurging on a new keyboard he claimed would sound “out of this world, brother.”

This was supposed to be the band’s first big step. Either one that would eventually let them take off running, or one leading right off a cliff. Either way, Newt wasn’t going to be the one to ruin it for everyone just because the newest addition to the Super Fun Road Trip Team happened to be the absolute worst.

But _still_.

Raleigh slapped his hands on his knees, as if they’d figured the whole thing out. “You guy’s’ll work it out. How bad could it be?”

Newt threw his hands up, the forgotten bottle in one of them thankfully empty. “Oh my god. Did I seriously just hear you say that? Mako, did he really just say that? Everyone knows that’s exactly the thing you say before everything gets _unresolveably awful!_ ”

Mako was doing a bad job of hiding her laugh behind her bottle, and Tendo was tucking his chin like he could smother his chuckles in his bow tie. “Oh, ha ha, yeah, let’s all laugh it up,” Newt cried, stuffing his sleeves over his elbows and then yanking them further down again. “So funny how everything is about to be totally ruined. Pass me another beer, Maks, this calls for consciousness augmentation.”

“Try to see the bright side,” Mako said, as she leaned back in her chair to open the fridge behind her without bothering to get up.  Raleigh’s foot rested on the lower rail to stop it from tipping over; he did it without even having to look up, like he could sense Mako’s center of gravity tipping. He traded a grin with Mako as her chair legs returned to earth, before turning back to Newt. “It can’t go any worse than it did last night,” he concluded with a grin.

Look, he’d known Mako for years. He literally taught her how to play the guitar, and if that wasn’t a metric of emotional investment on par with being a literal biological relation, then Newt wasn’t sure what was. But he had never been like, _responsible_ for her. Not in any paternal-authority-figure way, because Mako already had the most kickass paternal authority figure around, and also authority and/or responsibility weren’t really Newt’s style. So when she turned up with this Raleigh kid like a puppy she found behind the dumpster, it wasn’t Newt’s place to say she couldn’t keep him. They had some kind of mind-meld synchronizing waveform thing going on, and Newt could get that—or, maybe, he could get that he didn’t get it but that it wasn’t his thing to get.

That didn’t mean he couldn’t find it _deeply_ obnoxious when they both ganged up on him like this. Especially when he knew for a fact that he was 100% irrevocably right about what a terrible idea it was to bring this so-called Hermann Gottlieb on their otherwise-awesome tour.

At last, Newt sighed. “Shockingly, I don’t find that super comforting.” The beer bottle, when Mako handed it to him, was cold and damp with condensation. He had to seriously resist the impulse to press it to his forehead.

“It’s going to go fine,” Mako said, unconvincingly.

With a groan, Newt stopped resisting the impulse. 


End file.
